A novel MAC protocol for throughput optimization over IEEE 802.11 ad hoc networks

This paper presents a novel media access control (MAC) mechanism for IEEE 802.11 ad hoc networks, where a station will start a virtual contention process before every data packet from upper layer is forwarded to 802.11 MAC layer. By choosing the optimal size of virtual contention window for the specified network scenario (i.e., the number of stations and 802.11 MAC parameters), the maximum throughput of system can be achieved, which is validated by analytical model. Our scheme is very simple for practical deploying because there are no modifications required on IEEE802.11 hardware.